Posts by sisk

Female Chinese astronauts must have no scars, straight teeth

Re: Looks

Study hard, boys, and someday you may get to spend a couple weeks in a smallish tin can in space with a woman like this.

Wii U graphics said to be no better than current consoles

Re: D.O.A.

Who's going to buy it? People who want a console that costs half as much as the competition but still gets new games, Nintendo fanboys who want the latest in Mario and Metroid and Zelda, people who think that touchscreen controller is a nice enough touch to outdo whatever MS and Sony have for the next gen, and people who like gaming but dislike both MS and Sony.

You know, the same groups of people who kept the Wii at the top of the current generation for three or four years despite the fact that it's really just a GameCube with a gimmick.

Smoked by Android: Microsoft coughs up free laptop

Re: "throttling non-WinPhone devices"

"Not actually possible. Good FUD though, I can see you getting a free Apple t-shirt sometime soon."

Eh, I can think of two ways of doing it without putting any effort into it.

1) Throttling by MAC address range

2) Using request headers on HTTP traffic, especially the user agent (granted that one only works on HTTP traffic, but it still works).

Both are easily done on enterprise grade networking equipment. Heck, you can even do MAC address throttling on some high end consumer grade equipment.

The future of the fondleslab belongs to the Fire

Re: First time around

By this time the first time around they were getting difficult to find. I think the reason they bombed the first time around had more to do with the fact that it was tough to find one for under $1500 than anything else. This time around the things are cheap enough to be practical, especially the 7in ones. They're still not going to take over the world (there's just too much that they can't do well), but I wouldn't be suprised to see them become as ubiquitous as smart phones.

Paedophiles ‘disguise’ child abuse pages as legit websites

Commercial child sexual abuse peddlers

As a father, that phrase made me shudder. Could there possibly be any more disgusting breed af animal than this? What kind of beast would try to profit off of the pain of children?

Wave, Buzz... Android? What Apple teaches Google

That graph is fishy

Whereas all iPads are lumped conviently under 'iPad', the Android tablets are split into three categories (Android Tablet, ICS Tablets, and Nook/Kindle Fire). I'd be curious to see where Android Tablets would be if you put all of them together, or how many iPad would loose if you split out the devs only interested in the new one. You could, perhaps, justify splitting out the Nook and Fire (they only function as real tablets when they've been rooted), but why split out ICS tablets? Frankly, the splitting of the Android interest like that suggests a bias in the study to me.

Hardware exists.

Not so zen

If you can kick it when you're frustated, it's hardware.

Half of Apple fanbois would bank with the iPad titan

Re: Samsung Bank

I'd trust Samsung for banking before I'd trust Apple. Not to say I'd trust them enough to actually let them handle my banking.

New iPad can't get its Wi-Fi up

Re: User stupidity...

Unlimited data plans are getting hard to find in the US. The only reason I still have one is because I had it before Verizon stopped offering them and they haven't (yet) forced me to switch to a limited plan.

Chrome beats IE market share for one day

Re: "Chrome catching IE slowly"?

"Last time I let Chrome onto the network, it would install itself into user profiles to bypass Windows Installer lockouts."

I found that odd, and annoying as hell, but it's not necessarily 100% pure evil. It could be that it's doing that to give people a choice when they otherwise wouldn't have one. Of course by doing that Google is pitting themselves squarely against BOFHs everywhere, which seems like an unwise thing to do.

The Facebook job test: Now interviewers want your logins

Re: Facebook? To get a job?

"IMO, having a FB account shows a (minor) lack of judgement. Not having a FB account shows greater maturity and perhaps a better understanding of privacy concepts."

Not necessarily. I have a FB account because it's a good way to stay in touch with my family and with some friends from high school who have scattered from Florida to Arizona. As far as the privacy concerns on it go, I just don't have anything on my FB account that I'm not willing to share with the world.

Wouldn't work on me

My response to this would be that, as an IT professional, I take security too seriously to be giving out my password. No one, not even my wife, has my Facebook password. I sure as heck am not going to give it to someone I just met just because they're interviewing me for a job. And, were I in the situation of an employer hiring an IT professional, I would have serious second thoughts about hiring anyone who would.

Also, if I were refused a position based on those grounds, I'd be in touch with a lawyer. I don't like the idea of suing because I wasn't hired, but this kind of hiring practice simply can not be tolerated. Only when someone sues will the courts step in and put a stop to it, and I have severe doubts about getting the politicians to do so at all.

Reading plays host to live ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

Cool

Too bad I'm in America. I wonder if there's anything like this in my neck of the woods.

Rock'n'Roll Racing

About time

I was wondering when this awesome game was going to get some antique code show love. :-)

Rock 'n' Roll Racing remains my favorite racing game to this day. I'd love to see a remake, but I honestly don't see how they could improve on it other than by just updating the graphics. I'd be afraid of them ruining it with a remake.

So, what IS the worst film ever made?

Re: Serenity

It was Fox. They have a long tradition of cancelling thier best shows, usually just as they're starting to gain a decent following. Meanwhile the shows on that network that should have been cancelled years ago just keep going and going and going. Don't ever make the mistake of judging the quality of a show on Fox by how long a run it got.

Another nomination...

As much as I hate in inflict it on you all...Cinderella 2000. Just when you think it can't possibly get any worse, they start singing. That's about as far as I made it.

http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=9ORXua3H05I&feature=mv_sr

Re: Plan 9 From Outer Space

Call me crazy, but every so-called so-bad-it's-good film I've seen has struck me more as being just plain bad.

I believe the title was just 'The Last Airbender', so as not to be confused with Avatar since they came out relatively close together.

At any rate, I got the impression that Night hadn't even bothered watching a few episodes before he started making the movie.

Re: Footloose .....

Actually when the original was made it wasn't that difficult to find small towns in the Bible Belt where dancing was banned. Probably 90% of them changed that law after the original came out though, and most of the rest have long since quit enforcing it. That leave the remake looking rather silly.

Every film listed so far is actually pretty decent when compared to the worst movies around, with the possible exception of Highlander II (which doesn't exist, I don't care what anyone says).

The most truely awful movie I've ever had the misfortune to experience is Plan 9 From Outer Space. Also high on the list is Legend of the Rollerblade Seven. I nominate both of them.

Hackers jailbreak new iPad hours after it hits the shelves

Re: Apple TV3

"As it stands, without jailbreaking, it's a useless brick."

Then why the hell did you spend money on it? There are other IPTV boxes out there, or failing that get a tiny computer and do as you will with it. What does the Apple TV offer that makes it worth buying if you feel that you have to jailbreak it to make it useful?

Newly discovered asteroid will not ANNIHILATE THE EARTH

Re: Bring on Bruce Willis

Bruce Willis? Dude, the thing's 50m. You could knock it out of the sky with a well place SAM. There's no need to land some hotshot team of oil drillers on it with a nuke.

Walmart offers $2 digital copies of your DVDs

Re: @AC 16:36

Consider this: it's $2 PER MOVIE. Even an average movie collection would easily breach triple digit costs, and in 5 years you're out all that cash.

I've bought 2 or 3 movies a month for close to 20 years now because I haven't had any kind of TV service for most of my adult life. For someone like me who has an abnormally large movie collection and it could well be several hundred dollars. I'd be looking at $700 minimum to convert my entire collection. There's no way I'm handing over even a fraction of that much for a service that might not be there 5, 10, or even 20 years from now.

One advantage

I only see one advantage to this, and it's not the 'upgrade' to HD. Unless you pay for the upgrade and they rip a Bluray instead of a DVD that'd be pointless. The advantage I see is being able to have your movie collection with you at all times. Put a Vudu client on a tablet or smart phone and you're all set. Other than that why would I not exercise my fair use rights and rip my DVDs to my own media server?

Re: Disney's Opt-out

There's a solution to this. The Disney DVDs stay safely locked away in my house and my four year old knows how to access them from my DLNA server through the PS3. The PS3 controller is the only thing she's allowed to touch, and while it's not indestructible it does seem to be far enough beyond her rather considerable ability to destroy things to be safe.

Android clobbers Siri in Japanese... and English

Siri, bah

From what I've seen, Google Voice Search gets better results than Siri, and all it does is run a Google search.

Siri looks like something that should still be in beta. I don't understand why Apple released it in its current state. It's not like them at all to release an app that performs as inconsistantly as Siri, let alone make it the center of a marketting campaign.

Just like a real computer: Android gets Android IDE

Re: Good step, but not quite there yet

"The next logical step would be a "graphical shell" which has things as powerful as pipes and loops."

Done.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jackpal.androidterm&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImphY2twYWwuYW5kcm9pZHRlcm0iXQ..

Actually, I think there's more than one, but this is the one I have on my phone and tablet. Not that I ever use it. If I need something like that it's easier to plug into a PC and use adb shell so that I have a regular keyboard.

Developing on a tablet?

Maybe on a Transformer, but on most tabs? No thanks. I'll keep Eclipse for that, thanks.

Come on now, I can't be the only one who shudders at the thought of writing code on a virtual keyboard.

Top DARPA bomb boffin in explosive move to Google

Re: Maybe she left

Nah. She knows how to defend against explosive threats. They're hiring her to stop googlebombs.

DLNA blesses HomePlug Ethernet-over-mains tech

Powerline networking?

Last time I looked into that it was pretty near worthless. 802.11b was faster by the time you figured in the interference from that pesky power in the power lines. Has it gotten better in the last couple years? If not then I'd think that running DLNA over it would be an exercise in frustration.

TuneIn Radio Pro

Re: Rubbish app.

It must just not like your phone. I've been using it for close to a year on my Droid 1 with CM7 and haven't had any problems with it. In fact my favorite FM station has thier own app and TuneIn outpreforms it pretty significantly.

The only complaint I have is that it sucks down the battery enough when listening to radio over 3G that I only get about half a day as opposed to my normal 2-3 days, but that's really not all that suprising. It also sucks up bandwidth worse than Netflix, but I'm on an 'unlimited' plan and haven't ever used enough to get throttled.

Samsung spanks Apple in world's biggest mobile market

15m people using iPhones on a 2G network?

Why for the love of all that's holy would you pay for an iPhone and then put it on a 2G network??

1) Buy an uber expensive phone.

2) Neuter it.

Microsoft 'yanked optical drive from Xbox 720'

Re: Are they doing a sony?

I read it more like they're going back to cartridge based games like what we used to have before the first Playstation came along and showed the world that you could stuff a game onto an optical disc. Personally I'd welcome that move. You'd get much faster load times in a much more durable medium. I could finally put my games somewhere convenient instead of having to lock them up to protect them from my kids. It might, but probably wouldn't, raise the price of the game a few dollars, but it'd be worth it to me.

FSF fandroids fight to 'free' Android from Google's forepaws

Re: Stallman's definition of "truly free"...

When Stallman says 'free' he's thinking of freedom for the user. He doesn't really seem to care about the freedom of the original developer. The liscenses he supports do indeed seem to put shackles on the developer, but they allow the user to do whatever they want, including rewrite and redistribute the app. It seems odd given that he's an incredibly prolific developer in his own right, but I can understand, if not agree, with his thinking.

Anonymous web weapon backfires with hidden banking Trojan

Re: I think you are exaggerating

"Anonymous have never shown any skill in developing their own code and/or hacks. They are 100% idiotic script kiddies who are all thick as pig shit."

Not true. SOMEONE had to write the tools they use, which means someone who's pretty active in Anonymous (I hesitate to say high ranking because of how the organization is (un)structured) knows at least enough about coding to be dangerous.

Re: Sorry, no.

First off, the only reason Apple allows you to unlock your iOS devices is because legally they have no choice in the matter. The law of the land is that if you own the hardware you can unlock it and the only thing the manufacturer can do about it is void your warranty and refuse to support you. They campaigned very hard to make it illegal and lost to common sense.

Second:

"Compare and contrast Apple's approach with, say, Ubuntu's own app store equivalent. Try installing an application that hasn't been listed on their store and see how easy it is. Both Microsoft and Apple make this process much easier, even if you don't choose to go through their own channels."

Eh....download the deb file and run dpkg on it....what's difficult about that? Ubuntu probably even has a GUI to do it, but it would take longer to do it that way than it does to hit a hotkey for a terminal and type the command.

As for Apple and Microsoft making it easier...um, no. Microsoft is about the same as installing a deb from outside the repository. I can't speak for Apple's app store, but in my experience (on an older Mac from before they had the app store) installing Mac software is also about the same as installing a deb from outside the repository. Which all assumes, of course, that you could find any Linux software worth having that's not already in the Ubuntu repository (which is possible but difficult).

When you factor in the repository Microsoft shouldn't even be in the discussion for ease of use. Saying it's easier to install Windows software than it is to use Ubuntu's repository is ludicrous. Not that Windows software is hard to install by any means, but with the repository installing software from a trusted source a matter of clicking a checkbox and then clicking an install button. As mentioned above, you'd have difficulty finding any software worth having not in the sources that Ubuntu ships with.

As for Apple, I'd be very suprised if Apple's app store came anywhere near the number of apps available in Ubuntu's repository. I'm sure the Mac app store comes close to Ubuntu's repository in terms of ease of use, but if the iOS app store is any indication it's not quite there. I honestly doubt any app store that has to deal with paid-for apps could ever match the ease of use of the Ubuntu repository. It's hard to beat 'click, click, done'.

Archos touts Android tablets for toddlers

Great idea

Maybe if I get one of these I can finally keep tiny hands off my tablet. (Yeah, yeah, I know. A guy can dream, can't he?)

Hackers print tiny Linux box to net up your home

Re: Beagle Board.

That's still more than double the price of a Raspberry Pi B and more than triple the price of the Raspberry Pi A.

Plus the raspi is a full fledged PC, where as this looks more like an appliance. The raspi can do whatever you program it to do, but this does just a few things (but it probably does them well).

Asteroid could SMASH INTO EARTH in 2040

Mute point

The world's going to end in a little under 10 months on December 21. Just ask anyone wearing a hat fashioned out of tinfoil and they'll tell you all about it.

Re: A group in need of a theme song

It'll happen eventually. The likelyhood of it being in any of our lifetimes is pretty slim, but at some point in the next 20 million years or so the Earth will be hit by an ELE sized asteroid.

Bikini clad Princess Leia spied shakin' booty in Star Wars game

While I'm inclined to agree, I think that's more of an indication that we shouldn't be trading our old-school gamer cards for those newfangled gamer cards.

If you need me I'll be playing Rogue Squadron.

Facebook blamed for getting Thai teens up the duff

Re: Old fashioned solutions to old fashioned problems.

I only see a few problems with your assumptions:

"* compensation for the injured party (the knocked up girl gets financial support)

* punishment for the injuring party (where do you think the phrase "ball and chain" comes from?)"

You seem to be implying that it's all the guy's fault. In reality, it takes two to tango, so to speak. The girl is no more or less at fault than the guy. Plus a teen father is not going to be providing much in the way of financial support.

And besides, shotgun marriages are divorce fodder.

Ethics profs fret over cyborg brains, mind-controlled missiles

Two minds

On the one hand, being able to ditch the current HID technology and control a computer just by thinking would be pretty cool. On the other hand, I don't know if I'd be willing to put a cybernetic implant into my head to make it happen.

Re: Low tech

We had a computer back in the late 80s/early 90s that wouldn't boot till you hit it. We used a big screwdriver though, not a spanner. A spanner would have been overkill.

Re: Have you watched Stealth?

They should have known that jet was evil. After all, he pirated the music. All of it.

Re: Precedents already set.

The three laws are a hell of a lot closer to the future reality than Daleks. If you take fiction as your evidence then you might just as well assume that every alien civilization in the universe wants to wipe out humanity or that the internet will lead to the enslavement of the entire world by a single evil genus. Kane and the Daleks are both the result of the need for villians in fiction, not evidence that mankind can't be trusted with cybernetic technology. Fiction is a terrible place to look for what humanity will do with a given tech.

'Kill yourself now' - Torvalds throws openSUSE security tantrum

Re: Let me guess

Eh....this is Linus Torvalds we're talking about here, not some Linux newb. I'm fairly certain that's not the issue here.

Re: Yeah, Mr Torvalds Should Not Be Called A Moron

I see your point about WLANs, though I think that might be crossing the security vs convenience line a bit. Think of the businessman on the road who needs to connect to the hotel's wireless. He's not able to do his job unless the admins have equipped him with the root password, which means he's capable of far more damage than a man-in-the-middle attack.

As for printers, I can't concieve of a realistic situation where connecting to a printer is dangerous. In the few unrealistic scenarios I can think of Linux wouldn't be vulnerable in any case since it doesn't typically allow autoruns (though it can be forced to).

Fat margins squeeze Apple against Android

@cashxx

Let's put that into perspective, shall we? I have an iPad provided to me for work. I also have a Nook Tablet that I bought and rooted. Having used both of them I can tell you that the $250 Nook is far more useful to me than the $450 iPad. Granted it's a 7in screen vs the 10in screen on the iPad, but even so it hardly qualifies as 'cheap junk'.

But let's go with your assumption that only Asus and Samsung are worth having. Currently Best Buy has the 16gb versions of both the 10in Galaxy Tab and the 10in Transformer for $399.99. The Galaxy Tab is a sale price, with the normal price being the same as that of a 16gb iPad, but the Transformer price is the regular price. That's two high quality (by your own rather narrow definition) Android tablets that beat Apple's price by $50 without even shopping around.